Empathy by Atomicflea
Post-Ep Brennan POV for "The End in the Beginning"
Hospitals are designed for utilitarian purposes, and while I can respect the need for clinical detachment in most settings, I think I might withstand the wait a little better if only this chair wasn't so hard. It digs into me, reminding me that I haven't slept and that he's sleeping too long.
Bones are usually sloping and curved, but even in sleep his Booth has little softness. His face is all angles. Angles are usually localized anomalies that occur in the crestal bone as the result of both periodontal inflammation or occlusive trauma. I try to look at him as an author, a friend, but his face is like a cliff and physics notwithstanding, the imagined vertigo pulls at me so strongly I look away.
If he were awake he'd make some sort of joke to put me at ease, and I would laugh for him. He's not awake yet, so I don't leave.
He wouldn't leave me.
The story types itself. I'm not paying the attention I should to it, but one of the benefits of a superior intellect is the ability to multitask so I'm sure it's good. I'm a good author. I know how to tell a story, especially when it has nothing to do with me. My own story is no one's business.
Aside from the obvious physical limitations indicated in the phrase i.e. two objects occupying the same space, no one can truly understand what it is to be in another person's shoes. Family units and groups are held together by shared needs and provisions, and bonding helps ensure group survival. Emotions are no more than a means to an end, anthropologically speaking, but a necessary means.
I know it's not apparent to most, but I feel things.
I just don't see the purpose in sharing my feelings because no practical one exists. There's no true place for empathy in science. Still, I'm observant by nature and my intellect and sentience express themselves as routinely as anyone else, natural reactions to my environment and experiences, although of course experts differ on which has greater overall impact.
It's why I became a writer, to share my perceptions in a subjective way that wouldn't affect my work at the Jeffersonian. Sweets told me once it was my way of reaching out to people in a non-threatening way, but that's ridiculous. I'm no more threatening to anyone else than Booth is. I would say even less so, since he has a propensity to shoot first and ask questions later.
The nurse comes in to check his vitals and ask me if I need anything. I'm here long past the official visiting hours, but I insisted. I assured them that as his partner I had to stay with him. I am aware that staff may have inferred a greater meaning than I meant to convey, but at least it allows me greater access. The surgeon updated me on his condition and his vitals are stable. The staff has been very efficient, but I feel my face flush with irritation when she reaches past me to adjust his pillow and his head drops a bit.
I reach out and lift his face so it's not pressed against the pillow. His skin is a pale echo of its usual tone. His stubble scrapes my hand and I remind myself that despite his unconsciousness his body processes continue. He is not gone. He's not here, but not gone. I know what it is to be left behind, and he would not do this to me.
I take a moment to read through my novel so far. It jars me to see that it is not a anthropological murder thriller at all. I've written a romance under cover of a murder. I don't know how what to do with it, so I hit delete and will them all away, Bren and her baby-to-be, her loyal friends and her healthy, loving husband. I wanted a family that would never leave me, a child whose world would center itself around me. Could I just be responding to the expected societal norms, or was it deeper? Did my happiness really revolve around this man?
He opens his eyes. I hear his voice and mine echoes its texture, as if we both had been sick, both unconscious. He is beautiful to me. Bones knit themselves stronger after a break. People think of them as static, hard but they grow. Bones are alive. It occurs to me that he may not realize how long he's been asleep, away from life. From me.
I am not the woman he remembers. He did leave me, after all.
A minute ago he was the person who knew me best and it occurs to me that I don't know him anymore, either. We are strangers, the past four years lost in that observant mind I had become so accustomed to. I walk out to speak to the doctor and away from the look in his eyes. I feel awkward. The brain is a complicated organ. It's possible that this is merely a reaction to the trauma. Cranial pressure can cause changes in mood, memory loss. I can't remember enough soft tissue anatomy to fill in the blanks and my ignorance is a blinding terror. I run to the surgeon like a sinner to mass, and I repeat what he tells me until the logic of it calms me.
Bones mend, people heal. It just takes time.